Jane Eyre is an orphan, living with relatives she really cannot stand and obviously do not like her, Jane narrates the story herself and it starts with her being packed off to Boarding School. Sound familiar - JK Rowling possibly took inspiration from this for her character Harry Potter but the similarity between the two characters ends here. This book is set in the 18th Century and unlike Harry she hated school more than she hated home.
Buchanan launches a new series with this novel, starring Sergeant Craig Burch of the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad. Fans of Buchanan's Britt Montero series may recognize Burch as the cop who helped crime reporter Montero solve a cold case in The Ice Maiden (2002). Although Burch made a superb supporting character, in his first role as the lead, he comes off a bit like a newborn colt on shaky legs. Buchanan has given him the traditional backstory of the homicide cop so haunted by his work that his family life unravels, but he needs considerably more fleshing out if he is going to become a fully formed character.
Usually Araminta gets blamed when something's amiss in Spookie House. But this time she had nothing to do with the disappearance of Barry Wizzard's frogs, and she is determined to find them. It's not going to be that easy, especially when dealing with a crazy character named Old Morris, a dangerous shark, and a demanding aquarium show audience. Can Araminta find the frogs and steal the show?
Historical romance Mary Balogh (A Summer to Remember, etc.) falls back on the oft-used marriage of convenience formula for her first Bedwyn family installment, but what this whimsical Regency-era romance lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in character and execution. Having promised a dying officer that he'll protect the man's sister "no matter what," Col.
Ms. Bainbridge has wrought a Johnson so intellectually scintillating and emotionally unpredictable that her novel becomes a study not so much of character as of the mysteriousness of character....[Johnson] is a brilliant creation, and when, at the end of this luminous little novel, Ms. Bainbridge brings us to his end, we feel two losses simultaneously, the personal one and the loss to civilization.
